It’s nice when there’s something easy that you can do that gives you an immediate advantage. Chances are that you and your competitors don’t have testimonials on your websites. Or, if you do have, they haven’t been optimized for competitive advantage. (If you’re in the undesirable situation where you don’t have testimonials on your website and your competition does then you’re at a distinct disadvantage and need to remedy it without delay).

People like to buy from people and businesses that they feel good about, that they can trust. This is especially true on your website where you don’t have the opportunity to personally interact with them. There are several “trust signals” that we like to weave into our web designs that have a significant and positive impact on conversion rates.

One of the most important trust signals is the correct use of testimonials on your website.

This January we launched a new and improved website. In June, we threw out our home page and redid it from scratch.

Sometimes, we get it wrong.

OK, maybe not “wrong” but not “good enough”. We regularly review the results from our website in our quest to keep improving web performance. In this article, I’m sharing with you our process for doing data-driven website reviews and a bit of a case study on how we used it to significantly increase results for us.Read More

With all the talk about websites, Pay-Per-Click and social media marketing, it’s easy to think that the day of advertising in newspapers, magazines and the like has passed. Certainly, Online Marketing is a strong and worthy competitor for your advertising dollars and often squeezes out display advertising.

However, if print ads make sense for your business, then by combining your offline advertising with your online marketing, you can make your ads far more effective. Here’s how to use your website to turn regular display ads into powerful “direct response ads”.

(Here is a primer on the single most important marketing tactic available to local businesses today)

The topic of “Inbound marketing” is a big topic right now in the world of Internet Marketing. And for good reason. It’s a powerful strategy that can be a low-cost way to reliably and predictably bring your business new qualified leads and Customers.

Your headline has the power to attract and engage your ideal prospect. With a little bit of thought and a couple of headline writing tips, you can craft a headline that has a big impact on the results you see from your website.

Any time spent on Google looking for tips on writing effective headlines will come up with an endless number of sites, many of them with great advice. In this blog post, I want to focus in on a few headline tweaks that are easy to do and that are having the best results for our Customers.

When it comes to getting results from your website, one of the most important elements of your website (arguably even more important than the site’s visual look) is your message.

(This is part 1 of a 3 part series on how to write a website with effective copy)

Whether visitors surf on by your site or stick around and take action largely depends on how well your message fits with what they’re looking for. Giving thoughtful analysis to what your message should be is well worth the time.

“But I Can’t Write!”

If a website project starts to take too long, chances are it’s the writing. In fact, it’s become predictable. I’ve found that if a business doesn’t already have a clear understanding or articulation of its value proposition, service/product offerings and “story” about who they are then we’re going to have a challenge getting copy for the website.

A few years ago whether to worry about how well your site worked on a phone wasn’t much of a topic. Today, that’s all changed. When we look at the web stats of our local small business Customers, we’re commonly seeing 20% to 30% of their web traffic coming from tablets and smartphones.

Making sure your website has been designed with today’s smartphones in mind is critical for two reasons:

Having a well curated email list is an essential marketing tool for growing your local small business. Even with today’s big emphasis on social media marketing, Email marketing is still the Champion. The decision on whether to build your list using single or double opt-in is a critical one and one you need to be aware of.

Experience and recent changes in the Internet Marketing landscape have led me to reverse my long-held position on using a Single Opt-in method. I now strongly recommend, especially for the local small business, that you use a double opt-in method to build your email list.

Every day, there are untold numbers of people using the Internet to research before they buy. In fact, the vast majority of visitors to the typical small business website is there to research and not buy. However, most websites are geared towards selling and miss an important opportunity to start a relationship.

In this blog post, I want to share 3 critical areas of the website opt-in that are usually poorly implemented and that make a huge difference to your results.

By appealing to people’s desire to research and find out more, you can trade them their name and email address for some information that they value. You can then continue to market to them with your newsletters and other emails, building your relationship with them. When they’re ready to buy, you’ll be top of mind and much more likely to get the sale.

What does “Bounce Rate” mean? One of the key indicators of how well your small business website is doing can be found in your Google Analytic’s “Bounce Rate”. Essentially, the bounce rate measures how many people went to a page on your website and just left; they didn’t do anything else.

Think of it this way: If your site has a Bounce Rate of 50%, half of everyone going to your website goes only to a single page.

Reducing Your Bounce Rate Is An Easy Way To Get A Lot More Customers

Let’s say your website is getting 300 unique visitors a month. With a Bounce Rate of 50%, that means 150 people are not engaging with your site; they’re just leaving. If you could bring your Bounce Rate down to 40% that’s an extra 30 people who are engaging with you through your site every month…an extra 360 people a year!